I look at the roadside and see good grazing, at a fallen tree and see a jump. My phone autodials the farrier and my Mini hauls feed, so naturally my blog is about horses.

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In company at the Lone Wolf

It wasn’t a hairy water crossing or a scary construction to scramble through. Just a couple of traffic cones plunked down along a former logging road in the Danville-Georgetown trail system in Maple Valley.

The mission for the 60-odd contestants riding on Saturday, March 19th was to canter from one cone to the other. More specifically, the riders in the Pleasure Division were to pick up the canter on the right lead at the first cone and stop at the second cone about 60 feet away. Open Division riders were expected to start on the left lead, with a simple change at the pink ribbon tied to a tree at the midway point. If someone wanted to show off their flying lead change, that would be rewarded. Gaited horses should show a faster gait if they were not capable of a canter.

The canter/lope obstacle

My mission was to judge their performance. That seemed pretty straightforward also.

It was 10 a.m., around the time the first riders were scheduled to depart. I had stayed for the riders’ briefing since my obstacle was easy to reach, to make sure I heard the instructions they received. I had to hike in from the road all of a few hundred yards. I set up my chair at the midway point so that I could both communicate with the riders as they arrived and get a good critical look at their ride.

Lisa, Carol & Lynn are all smiles in the morning

As I tried out my judges chair, basking in the sunshine, I saw the perfect ride in my minds eye. The foundation for all trail obstacles goes back to the days before leisure riding ruled the world, when a horse was the way to get around cattle country. A ranch horse had to be comfortable and sane, willing to stand while you opened a gate, to be calm when moving through water or over deadfall, but willing to change gaits at the touch of the leg, a true partner in your work. by the time I was done conjuring up my ideal and the ranch to go with it, it was the shady side of 10:30.

I pulled out the map. Obstacle Six was at least three quarters of the way along the route. It would obviously be some time before I saw riders. Perhaps I had been hasty in heading out so early, but there were dangerously tempting pastries at the start. I ate my banana and almonds, good for a few minutes distraction. I got up and walked around. Some fresh tracks across the trail caught my eye. Those were too large for deer tracks. Were there elk in these woods?

Tracks close to five inches long

The woods were not exactly wilderness. There were five bars of reception on my iphone, so looked up the Danville Georgetown Equestrian Trails. No elk were specifically mentioned, but elsewhere a traffic fatality was reported from hitting an elk in Maple Valley. I didn’t need a website to tell me there were deer around as I stumbled over bones scattered in the grass. While a solitary wolf was sighted in the area in 1997 (inspiration for the trail the ride was named after), this was more likely roadkill dragged around by lesser scavengers.

The woods had obviously been clearcut, though not recently. There was the usual growth of Himalayan blackberry along the road, but salal and swordfern dominated the undergrowth under the older fir and red alder had claimed the boggy spots.

Timber was only one relatively recent use of the area. Some of the trails are on land owned by the Palmer Coking Company. Some useful seams of coal had been mined underground — a reminder that in the Eocene era this was a steamy coastal swamp. A lot can change in 34 million or so years – it’s 500 feet above sea level now, except where the Cedar River cuts a channel through it. Less than a mile upstream is the Landsburg Dam, the source of the water for the City of Seattle. Essentially, the trails remain available because development of the land would damage the watershed – and because the Tahoma Chapter of the Back Country Horsemen maintain them.

Time travel through the epochs took me to nearly 10:45 and there were still no riders.

Where was everyone from the ride meeting?

Was it possible I was in the wrong place somehow? No. Ride organizer Jamie Thomas had given me clear directions, and there were the orange cones for reassurance. I reviewed the ACTHA standards for the obstacle. I deleted junk from my email inbox. I wondered if Lynn Mazer, who was judging an earlier obstacle, had seen any riders yet. I pushed all the buttons on the walkie to see what happened. I haven’t used one since film production days. Perhaps I should have gotten a refresher course. Oh well.

Then the phone rang. It was Cathy Leddy, who was coming to join me. Excellent news. It was 11:00.

I had invited her to come, but knowing the number of obligations she has, I hadn’t really expected her to make it. As well as having the pleasure of her company , it would be supremely helpful to have an assistant to organize the riders, as they might be arriving in bunches – if they ever showed up. I was failing to really achieve a zen-like harmony with nature that morning, in spite of the sun. It is hard for me to relax while waiting for something to happen — a training hole or temperament issue, or both.

There were still no riders by the time Cathy showed up at 11:15. Cathy and I scrutinized the map together. “They must have started late,” she said. “I don’t see how it could take more than an hour to ride four or so miles, even at the walk.”

She was of course imagining doing the ride with her horse Galen. He’s a power walker.

It was a colorful field

I pointed out that these were not endurance horses, and that there might be some wait time at the earlier obstacles, before the riders spread out on the trail. Possibly the first riders hadn’t started right at 10:00. There was no reward for speed, so perhaps people were moseying along, enjoying the dappled sunshine. Still, by the time noon rolled around, I was getting a bit fretful too.

I handed Cathy the stopwatch since she didn’t have the stylish orange judge’s bandanna I was wearing. There’s nothing more official-looking than a stopwatch, except perhaps a clipboard — but I needed that.

Since we had to check the stopwatch was working and that Cathy knew how to use it, I cantered the obstacle myself. I did a perfect departure, though Cathy told me to collect a little more to prepare for the flying change at the ribbon. It took a whopping 18 seconds for a human to canter. This bit of silliness proved to be the magic charm.

I had only just made it back to my station when the first riders appeared.

There was a wide variety on the trail that day, along with two deer and a few dog walkers. It was nearly 3:00 when Tamara, the WASART sweep rider, came through on her white horse, the same one I had seen earlier loaded with a stuffed snake and a gorilla.

As for the performances, all riders got their horses from one cone to the other. Some canters were enviable – balanced, cadenced and soft, with harmony between partners. Others reflected the fact that some horses were at the beginning of their learning curve or under the influence of spring fever. Some of the riders appeared pretty green too.

Some also acknowledged they didn’t do much work at the canter and weren’t too sure of their leads. Other with a green horse said they weren’t even going to try a canter. One horse couldn’t decide whether to be more afraid of the ribbons or of me. I could not predict the results based on breed, tack, first impression of the horse (or mule) or even the division someone was riding in.

The obstacle proved enough of a challenge to spread out the contestants over the whole range of scores from 1 to 10 (Happily I did not have to award any zeros, as even the skittish horse made it through from one cone to another). Because there are separate scores for horse and rider, a judge can reward good horsemanship practices as well as perfect execution, as well as awarding pluses for a truly excellent performance. The riders didn’t get any do-overs, nor did I. I could only rate the performance I saw and scores had to be recorded rapidly as there was often another rider lined up.

Because the awards ceremony is held after the ride, the next priority was to get the scores into the system ASAP. Thanks to a suitcase power supply that another judge had – much quieter than running Jamie’s laptop off her truck’s cigarette lighter, we were able to dictate the scores while Lynn Mazer did the typing. As judges, we didn’t take home ribbons, but we did have satisfaction and camraderie.

Takeaways

With eight obstacles requiring very different skill sets, most of the riders will go home with an idea of something they need to work on. Some had epiphanies on the trail. One woman told me that her mare did much better at the sidepass over the log than she was expecting, stepping right off her leg as if she understood the task and was saying “Don’t worry, I’ve got this one!”

Kitty on the job at Lone Wolf - photo Lynn Mazer

When Jamie asked about judges who could do the next ride, at the Horse Park in Cle Elum, it highlighted a dilemma. While I’d love to do it, the judges will be required to ride to their obstacles. Willy is an arena horse you can hack out on the trails, not a genuine trail horse — I just don’t see Willy standing patiently tied to a tree like Kitty as other horses go by. More likely he would add difficulty to the obstacle for the other horses and my focus would be divided. In fairness, I have not prepared him for that role either. Perhaps me trying to teach patience is like the blind leading the blind, anyway.

That doesn’t mean Willy couldn’t be an ACTHA competitor — we’d just have to do some serious preparation. In fact, that was part of my agenda in helping out – to get ideas and inspiration for challenges to set up at the barn for Willy and for the young horses in training. When we took Danny and Goshen to Margaret Pomeroy’s barn for the first of their “exposure” trips ( an easy five-minute trailer ride), we were delighted to see she had some obstacles set up that we could take the boys through in hand. Seems she’s getting geared up for the season as well.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..